FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. – Before a soldier approaches a sniper’s hideout or fires a precision shot, he must first know the ins and outs of his weapon.
From day one of basic training, soldiers are taught to field strip their rifles, understand how the bolt carrier group works, and know exactly what to do when their weapon malfunctions.
It’s not magic. It is simply a tool of trade.
The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College’s newest AI Fundamentals Elective Course applies the same philosophy to artificial intelligence.
Day 1 of the new course began with the question, “How many of you know how your rifle works?”
“AI is just another weapon system,” said instructor and curriculum developer Lt. Col. Timothy Williams. “In this class, we’re going to talk about how AI works at that level: how it’s built, how it’s trained, and what it’s actually interacting with when it interacts with these platforms. We’re going to teach you how to use it not just as a rifleman, but as a sniper.”
At the beginning of the Command and Staff School’s 2026 Command and Staff Course academic year, AI elective instructor and curriculum developer Lt. Col. Anthony Joyce and Lt. Col. Williams observed students using AI at varying levels of expertise.
The 48-hour elective was created to provide structure and a kind of basic training in the AI mechanics of large language models, what tokens are, how to ingest data, similar to understanding how Gus manipulates the bolt of an M4.
The elective is a two-pronged design focused on a fundamental understanding of AI and how to use the technology effectively, and using that knowledge to create agents that solve real-world Army problems.
“We’re teaching all levels of AI users how to leverage AI to rapidly create tools for warfighting organizations. Soldiers know what they need their tools to do, and now they can create them themselves.”
Mr Joyce said it was important to have a fundamental understanding of how AI worked so that police officers could go beyond the use of technology to solve basic job problems for officers as well as basic training.
He explained that by demystifying technology, CGSC selectors are transforming from basic users who fire a wide range of generic prompts to digital shooters with surgical, data-driven precision.
“If you know how to create slides, you know what tools to use to create slides, and that’s what we teach in this class,” he said. “If we can build agents out of this class, we can build agents across all joint force platforms and software.”
A total of 130 students took the new elective. Nearly two-thirds of them had little experience using AI in a production environment.
That number, Williams and Joyce said, is 130 Soldier developers who will become ambassadors for AI agents in the next unit, effectively distributing free software creation skills across the unit.
The population taking the first AI elective included not only U.S. Army students, but also members of the joint force and international students from alliance partner countries.
The wide variety of knowledge bases, services, and nations required Joyce and Williams to create a curriculum that was intentional in its delivery.
“One of the things that surprised me most about this elective course was the diversity of military career specializations. [signing up to take it]. “We’ve had everyone from chaplains, medics, congressmen to the more obvious MI and signals. But whatever their starting point, they all achieved overall learning objectives that enable the entire Army, the joint force, the partner force. They all became Soldier developers,” he said.
For Zambian Army student Lt. Col. Victor Simkonda, the AI elective course was another means of building interoperability. He noted that AI is something militaries around the world are learning, and this course demonstrated a transferable capability for the U.S. military.
“It gives us [international students] It will be easier to see and understand the differences in functionality. “But this is also an opportunity to bridge that gap. This will help us all start thinking about applying this in a similar way so we can have better interoperability and function as allies and partners,” said Simkonda.
At the end of the course, Simkonda created Vanguard, a modular command intelligence system intended to help soldiers understand doctrine and military intelligence.
While building the agent, Simukonda not only learned how AI works, but also its intended application: problem solving.
“My biggest lesson was to stop looking at artificial intelligence as just a tool that we create, but [stet] “Look at them as something that helps you solve problems. It’s changing your mindset from thinking like a tool to thinking like a problem,” he said. Questions like “What kind of AI am I creating?” It prompted me to think about what problem we are trying to solve and whether it has to do with the human side of this system, or whether the system we are creating is intended to help solve human problems. ”
Similarly, Civil Affairs Officer Maj. Andrew Fletcher entered the elective course with little experience with AI, but staff and faculty encouraged him to take advantage of a professional military education environment that gave him space to experiment.
Fletcher explained that the course not only taught him a basic understanding of what AI is, but also changed his way of thinking.
“Understanding how AI thinks and how it uses information to get the answers you’re looking for completely changes your mental framework for how you view information,” he said. “Now, when we receive data, instead of presenting it and categorizing it like we used to, we present it in a way that AI can leverage. And I think that mental shift was the key.”
After graduation, Fletcher will assume command in the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion under the Special Forces Group, bringing along an AI agent to support the side effects of the Civil Affairs Force’s modernization efforts.
He explained that smaller, more mobile forces are increasingly capturing critical data points, creating a need for the ability to analyze and share results.
Fletcher said AI is the perfect low-cost solution beyond civil affairs.
“I think with really basic instruction and just a ‘how-to’ on how to use some tools, Soldiers everywhere in the Army, with very little technical expertise, would be really surprised at how powerful their knowledge of their job is, what they can create with little technical expertise, and the power and impact they can have on the force,” he said.
For Joyce and Williams, the impact is the introduction of free software solutions created by soldiers who can easily identify problems that solutions can solve.
“Innovation at the speed of war is what will win future battles and future wars. And traditionally, in the military, we’ve had to rely on our defense industrial base, which is a great partner, and we’ve relied on them for all the big software stuff. Now, we don’t necessarily have to rely on them to solve small problems, and we can allocate our budget, time, and effort to the more complex problems that they’re better suited to solve,” Joyce explained.
AI is the future of warfare, Williams said, making the CGSC an ideal place for such selective talent to emerge, reinvent, and ultimately push throughout the force.
CGSC is a force generator, educating the largest population of field-grade officers in the Army, Joyce explained.
“If we can train field-grade officers to be Soldier developers, we’re going to be the force that creates that capability in the Army, and we’re going to go into operational units, do that, train our people, and then create the flywheel,” he said. “This is mutually beneficial because the captains coming to CGSOC are further down the pipeline in using AI technology than the existing group.”
The prediction that students in future grades will acquire more AI-related knowledge and skills is already driving curriculum adaptations.
Williams explained that some of the first lessons of the AI Fundamentals course will be integrated into the first Common Core lessons of the school year, allowing PME to expose students to AI earlier than before.
Additionally, he said the future of AI electives could expand to meet students’ needs and evolve into more advanced electives.
The number of CGSOC students with AI proficiency and the potential to become agents solving the Army’s deepest problems will nearly triple next year, Joyce explained.
Students and instructors said they were excited to see the lessons learned and the agents being applied in divisions and corps across the force.
“The Army has over a million people, and the idea is that if we put this capability into the hands of a million soldiers, the Army could become the world’s largest software developer overnight. And it’s powerful to think that. The Army didn’t start out in that role, but now we have the ability to create it,” Joyce said.
